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Some suggested ways to use our Surprise Me player

Kate Torgovnick — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:00:11 +0000

As Barry Schwartz explained in his classic TEDTalk “The paradox of choice,” the more options you have, the more confounding making a decision can feel. This is the logic behind our new Surprise Me feature, a serendipity engine that lets you decide what kind of talks you’d like to see and how long you have to watch them. It’s an easy way to find great talks you’ve never seen before. Some of options you can try:

But the sky is truly the limit here. Create your own personalized playlist by heading to our Surprise Me page. Enjoy!

While we’re out, try our Surprise Me serendipity engine

Kate Torgovnick — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:00:36 +0000

In this classic talk from TEDGlobal 2009, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister explains why, every seven years, he closes his New York-based shop for a full 365 days. We here at TED aren’t quite that extreme, but we too believe in the restorative power of vacation time. And thus, for the next two weeks, the TED office is closed.

While we won’t be posting new videos during that time, we aren’t about to leave you hanging. We’ve launched a brand new feature, Surprise Me!, to help you navigate through talks you haven’t yet seen from our 1200+ video archive. Not sure what to watch? Let this new serendipity engine handpick a playlist of gems for you. Want 20 minutes of ingenious talks? Or 40 minutes of courageous ones? Your wish is our command.

And never fear, the TED Blog will still be here. Make sure to check in here for fresh content every weekday.

Our new “Surprise Me” feature delivers serendipity on demand

Emily McManus — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:14:52 +0000

Have 10 minutes to spare? Want to spend them on something inspiring? How about something jaw-dropping? Our new “Surprise Me” feature delivers. Just tell us how much time you have (15 minutes? 40?) and what you’re in the mood to watch (Something funny? Fascinating? Persuasive?) and we’ll generate a custom playlist that matches the moment.

Available from the TED.com homepage, Surprise Me factors in talk length, user ratings and the age of each talk to create the playlists. For instance, a visitor with time for 40 minutes of jaw-dropping talks may receive a combination of 18-, 6- and 3-minute talks recently rated “jaw-dropping.” And because a talk deemed jaw-dropping three years ago could be less impressive now (compared with more evergreen labels like “inspiring”) our “serendipity engine” factors in a talk’s “age” as well.

Once you’ve customized your playlist, you can watch it in our new theater-style player, where the talks run continuously. It features three viewing sizes, support for 720p high-resolution video in full-screen mode, and back-end technology that continually detects your bandwidth, adjusting the video quality level over time to ensure smooth playback.

Our hope is that Surprise Me fills a need we’ve noticed. More and more, we hear from people who are “appointment viewers”: They have a specific TED habit — watching talks during their 30-minute lunch break, for example, or on Sunday evenings with their kids. We created Surprise Me with this in mind … It’s perfect for those moments when you have a set amount of free time but don’t know exactly what you want to watch. Just tell us your criteria, and we’ll take it from there… Serendipity: On demand.

A big thank you to our partner Rolex, for supporting the development of this project!